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A Wi-Fi/VoIP Phone Booth In the Burning Man Desert

Posted by timothy on from the burning-pots dept.

Brad Templeton writes "I, (of EFF/ClariNet/rec.humor.funny) along with Brent Chapman (Majordomo/Building Internet Firewalls) and the satellite dish of John Gilmore (EFF/Cygnus/Cypherpunks/etc.) put together an engaging hack -- a battery-powered free phone booth using 802.11, VoIP and a satellite IP uplink. This was placed in the desert at the Burning Man arts festival deep in the remote Nevada Black Rock playa, exactly where you wouldn't expect a working phone booth to be. With cheap VoIP people were able to call all over the world. The reactions of people to such incongruous technology were great fun and emotional as well. There's a page about the phone including details of building it and live experiences including totally non-gratuitous photos of naked people using technology. (There, that ought to stress-test my new server!)"

9 of 214 comments (clear)

  1. Jerry Maguire by rpbailey1642 · · Score: 5, Funny
    ...including totally non-gratuitous photos of naked people using technology. (There, that ought to stress-test my new server!)"

    Mmmm, you had me at naked.

  2. Free porn? by shfted! · · Score: 5, Funny
    There's a page about the phone including details of building it and live experiences including totally non-gratuitous photos of naked people using technology. (There, that ought to stress-test my new server!)"

    Never underestimate the power of horny nerds.

    But I gotta ask... would this lower my 1-900 bills?

    --
    He who laughs last is stuck in a time dilation bubble.
    1. Re:Free porn? by AKnightCowboy · · Score: 5, Funny
      Never underestimate the power of horny nerds.


      Because one major thing the Internet lacks is unlimited access to free pornography. Just this morning I was thinking to myself: "Self... wouldn't it be cool if some entrepreneur put pictures of naked women on the Internet? Then we wouldn't have to visit those skanky adult bookstores in the seedy district anymore."

      Who am I kidding though... if pornography was available on the Internet, how would we keep children from gaining access to it? Our entire society could collapse.

  3. As if... by alexcampbell · · Score: 5, Funny

    "including totally non-gratuitous photos of naked people using technology"
    As if photos of naked people could ever be gratuitous to Slashdot readers!

  4. Results of new server stress-test: by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    Failure at three comments.

    1. Re:Results of new server stress-test: by grozzie2 · · Score: 5, Informative
      Lots of folks are under the mistaken impression that a /. attack takes out servers. It rarely does that. What it does do, is totally flood the incoming/outgoing network pipe. If your server is on the far side of a t-1 or equivalent connection, the connection doesn't stand a chance, and the episode ends up being just like a distributed syn flood, all the incoming connections, but not enough bandwidth to deliver the responses. *nix boxes tend to survive fine, some flavours of windows boxes will do the bsod in this case, tcpip stack blows buffers in ring0 driver code. OTOH, if you are sitting in a data center with a 100 mbit connection to the upstream router, which has gigabit feeds to the internet, you should have no problem withstanding the onslaught of the /. crowd.

      I will admit, on a new server, this is a pretty slick trick to stress test the whole system. Just suggest nudie pics available to the /. crowd, sit back, and watch to see if the upstream routers can deal with the loads. It's a far better way to see if your upstream providers have problems than sitting back and waiting till there's real business/money on the line. I've got a new load balanced cluster going live for a client in a couple weeks, probly gonna steal a page from your book here, I've always known the /. test was a good one, never thought to spice the blurb with the hint of nudie pics.

  5. Google Cache by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

    http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:pj83shgh248J:ww w.templetons.com/pq/playa.html+&hl=en&client=firef ox-a/

  6. Mod Parent -1 Insecure Prick by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Jesus you are a fucking prick who's stuck on themself. Plenty of CS majors are well-read, speak foreign languages, etc., but most of them don't put up page-long posts to Slashdot about how cool and well-rounded they are, and about how more people should be like them, and do the things they like to do.

  7. Re:Emotional reactions to technology? by metlin · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You raised a valid point, but I have just one problem with the artsy folks - they wear their non-technical fronts as something of an identity.

    I play in a band, and I'm the only technical person in it. However, the rest of them take PRIDE in the fact that they cannot, or rather, will not - do math or science.

    On the other hand, almost all the technical people I've seen make a conscious effort at *something* artsy or the other (languages, music, painting, dramatics, martial arts, etc) - something or the other, at the very least. And they are seldom proud of the fact that they cannot do artsy stuff - I've always wished that I could paint or do dramatics.

    That is a kind of defeatist attitude, especially since communiation has to be two way - it does not help if only the geeks made an effort to get into arts, there has to be cooperation from the other side, too.